CHPASSWD(8)

System Management Commands

CHPASSWD(8)

NAME¶

chpasswd - update passwords in batch mode

SYNOPSIS¶

chpasswd [options]

DESCRIPTION¶

The chpasswd command reads a list of user name and password pairs from standard input and uses this information to update a group of existing users. Each line is of the format:

user_name:password

By default the passwords must be supplied in clear-text, and are encrypted by chpasswd. Also the password age will be updated, if present.

The default encryption algorithm can be defined for the system with the ENCRYPT_METHOD variable of /etc/login.defs, and can be overwritten with the -e or -c options.

chpasswd first updates all the passwords in memory, and then commits all the changes to disk if no errors occurred for any user.

This command is intended to be used in a large system environment where many accounts are created at a single time.

OPTIONS¶

The options which apply to the chpasswd command are:

-c, --crypt-method METHOD

Use the specified method to encrypt the passwords.

The available methods are SHA256, SHA512, and NONE if your libc supports these methods.

By default (if none of the -c or -e options are specified), the encryption method is defined by the ENCRYPT_METHOD variable of /etc/login.defs.

-e, --encrypted

Supplied passwords are in encrypted form.

-h, --help

Display help message and exit.

-R, --root CHROOT_DIR

Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory. Only absolute paths are supported. No SELINUX support.

-P, --prefix PREFIX_DIR

Apply changes to configuration files under the root filesystem found under the directory PREFIX_DIR. This option does not chroot and is intended for preparing a cross-compilation target. Some limitations: NIS and LDAP users/groups are not verified. PAM authentication is using the host files. No SELINUX support.

-s, --sha-rounds ROUNDS

Use the specified number of rounds to encrypt the passwords.

You can only use this option with crypt method: SHA256 SHA512

By default, the number of rounds for SHA256 or SHA512 is defined by the SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS and SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS variables in /etc/login.defs.

A minimal value of 1000 and a maximal value of 999,999,999 will be enforced for SHA256 and SHA512. The default number of rounds is 5000.

CAVEATS¶

Remember to set permissions or umask to prevent readability of unencrypted files by other users.

CONFIGURATION¶

The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change the behavior of this tool:

ENCRYPT_METHOD (string)

This defines the system default encryption algorithm for encrypting passwords (if no algorithm is specified on the command line).

It can take one of these values: SHA256, SHA512 (default), . See crypt(5) for recommendations.

History: This variable is used by other programs, which may still default to unsafe algorithms such as DES. To avoid using unsafe algorithms, the variable should always be specified.

SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS (number), SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS (number)

When ENCRYPT_METHOD is set to SHA256 or SHA512, this defines the number of SHA rounds used by the encryption algorithm by default (when the number of rounds is not specified on the command line).

With a lot of rounds, it is more difficult to brute force the password. But note also that more CPU resources will be needed to authenticate users.

If not specified, the libc will choose the default number of rounds (5000), which is orders of magnitude too low for modern hardware.

The values must be inside the 1000-999,999,999 range.

If only one of the SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS or SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS values is set, then this value will be used.

If SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS > SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS, the highest value will be used.

FILES¶

/etc/passwd

User account information.

/etc/shadow

Secure user account information.

/etc/login.defs

Shadow password suite configuration.

Source file:	chpasswd.8.en.gz (from shadow 4.20.2-2.1)
Source last updated:	2026-08-10T06:57:03Z
Converted to HTML:	2026-09-20T00:49:43Z